Obama on mapping the congressional brain

4/2/13 10:25 AM EDT

President Obama joked on Tuesday that a new project he is proposing to map the human brain could help explain how Washington works.

"Of course, none of this will be easy," he said. "If it was, we’d already know everything there was about how the brain works -- and presumably my life would be simpler here. It would, could explain all kinds of things that go on in Washington. We could prescribe something.

"So it won't be easy, but think about what we could do once we do crack this code."